Updated every Monday with a new cartoon and most Friday's with some artwork

Monday, May 30, 2011

It's All in the Packaging

Greetings! Welcome again to the Weekly Brinks Cartoon! This week's cartoon is really early for once, as I thought I'd try going back and kick it old school! So as you may or may not know my current process of drawing my cartoons is; first I do a quick mock-up sketch, then I drawn the cartoon in pencil, then I scan the drawing and using my tablet on my PC I trace the line-work and then colour it and finally I add all the text in. This is a relatively new method for me as I only got my tablet for the Christmas just gone. Today I was concerned with time so I went back to doing it the way I use to, which is to use ink pens to ink over the pencil drawing, which is drawn in a special non-photo blue pencil (it's a special colour that doesn't show up when scanned or photocopied) and then scan that in and colour it on the PC. This method is a lot faster (especially as I was colouring on only one layer, rather than multiple layers) than the other but the quality of the final line-work is no where near as good, but as this is not getting printed and only viewed online then it doesn't really matter (If you zoomed in on the original you'd notice, big time but as this is only a low DPI version you won't notice). What do you think? There's way more line-work than normal, as it's easier and quicker to do. The only problem is it's a tad trickier to do my latest background trick where all the line-work outlines are coloured so just I didn't do it this week (I'll work on finding a easier way to do it as I really like it). Over the next few weeks I'll experiment some more with how I do all this now, but I kind of like inking by hand, I forgot how much I enjoyed it actually. Hopefully I'll be able to whip up 2 cartoons on Monday's, or at least 1 and a 1/2! Then I can have some backup's just in case and I won't have to be in a rush and stay up late on Monday nights any more, yay!

This cartoon is an idea I've been throwing around for a few months now, the idea was always the same, just condom packets with pictures of STD's on them just like cigarette packets. Quite possibly this idea came about because of all the recent talk in the media about plain packaging on smoke packets here in Australia. The problem I had was trying to get all the text right on this one, especially as it's pretty heavy on the text more than my usual stuff. So it was important to get it right, in fact as I type this I still haven't finished it completely as I still not sure I have the caption right yet..... Oh and seriously if you think the text should be something better, please tell me, it's not that hard to change really....that is if I agree with you of course. Did you like the background in this one? I know it's not much, but I could have definitely done it way more simpler (as I've recently fallen into the habit of doing) that's for sure.

So next week I'll be out of town for a week to go visit some of my family up north, but will this stop me posting a new cartoon? Hell no! I plan on starting next week's 'toon this afternoon and work on it during the week and have it ready to go and saved so I can just publish it on Monday...that is if my mum's Internet is any good! What can I say, I'm dedicated, no rest for the wicked....

Last night I went for a big trip down memory lane by going through all my old inked cartoons to see what ones I want to look at 'rebooting' and it ended up being a lot of fun! I do have a small pile there now of ones I'm keen to redo. It's amazing to see how my artwork and ideas have changed over the years, some of the earlier stuff is pretty bad and there also was a bad phase I had, strangely enough when I was studying Graphic Design back in 2000/2001 (I think all my artistic effort was going into my study and not my cartoons honestly, as you can really see how lazy I was, especially with backgrounds which I think is where my recent laziness in that area started from) I even pulled out some where I've done some techniques that I wouldn't mind trying and experimenting with again! Also last night I finally after all these years let Penelope read through one of my notebooks, of which she wants to now read through all of them and mark the one's she thinks are good ideas, which actually is a really good idea I think. You see sometimes I won't realise how good an idea is or I think something is no good when it isn't. Sometimes my sense of humor can be a tad strange and all so, we'll give it a go and see what happens! Be warned though, Pen is a big fan of my cruder jokes so be prepared for smut!

So my new plan for when I come back from holidays is to have a regular mid-week, non-cartoon update. I plan on doing some humorous stories/articles of some sort, but the main one I plan on doing is a Top 5 type thing. I know that's not very original and all, but I just love top 5 lists I must say, so I'll give it a try soon. I also plan on promoting this blog some more as well as I need more readers, any ideas people?